How many baby Bush rats are in a litter?
A Bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.With 3 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 12 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 22 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 4 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 4.2 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Rattus). An adult Bush rat grows up to a size of 15.8 cm (0′ 7″).
To have a reference: Humans obviously usually have a litter size of one ;). Their babies are in the womb of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks) and reach an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). They weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual, and reach an average age of 75 years.
The bush rat (Rattus fuscipes) is a small Australian nocturnal animal. It is an omnivore and one of the most common indigenous species of rat on the continent, found in many heathland areas of Victoria and New South Wales.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Bush rat is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Mexican vole with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Golden spiny mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Microryzomys altissimus weighting only 13 grams
- Akodon albiventer weighting only 26 grams
- Koford’s grass mouse weighting only 29 grams
- House mouse with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Little Indian field mouse with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Incan hocicudo weighting only 34 grams
- Zempoaltepec with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Lorentz’s mosaic-tailed rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Bush rat
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Little pocket mouse
- Nectomys squamipes
- Desert pygmy mouse
- San Joaquin pocket mouse
- American red squirrel
- Peromyscus maniculatus
- Botta’s pocket gopher
- Tondano rat
- Short-tailed shrew tenrec
- Golden jackal
Animals that get as old as a Bush rat
Other animals that usually reach the age of 3.42 years:
- Yellow-footed antechinus with 3.5 years
- Hylaeamys megacephalus with 3.75 years
- Black-footed tree-rat with 3.83 years
- Woolley’s false antechinus with 4 years
- Brazilian spiny tree-rat with 3.08 years
- Yellow-necked mouse with 4 years
- Sminthopsis laniger with 3.25 years
- Brown four-eyed opossum with 4 years
- Northern brown bandicoot with 3 years
- Alpine pika with 3 years
Animals with the same weight as a Bush rat
What other animals weight around 124 grams (0.27 lbs)?
- Silky Oldfield mouse weighting 115 grams
- Pará spiny tree-rat weighting 108 grams
- Asian garden dormouse weighting 100 grams
- Green bush squirrel weighting 100 grams
- Ruwenzori otter shrew weighting 112 grams
- Woolly mouse opossum weighting 107 grams
- Ethiopian narrow-headed rat weighting 144 grams
- Black-tailed gerbil weighting 123 grams
- Collared pika weighting 129 grams
- White-tailed antelope squirrel weighting 104 grams
Animals with the same size as a Bush rat
Also reaching around 15.8 cm (0′ 7″) in size do these animals:
- Ladak pika gets as big as 17.7 cm (0′ 7″)
- Tschudi’s slender opossum gets as big as 13.1 cm (0′ 6″)
- Kowari gets as big as 15.8 cm (0′ 7″)
- Nimba otter shrew gets as big as 16 cm (0′ 7″)
- Collared pika gets as big as 18.8 cm (0′ 8″)
- Siskiyou chipmunk gets as big as 14.5 cm (0′ 6″)
- Oldfield white-bellied rat gets as big as 14.3 cm (0′ 6″)
- Voalavoanala gets as big as 14.2 cm (0′ 6″)
- Merriam’s chipmunk gets as big as 13.4 cm (0′ 6″)
- Paraguayan fat-tailed mouse opossum gets as big as 12.7 cm (0′ 5″)